Drapery Study for a Standing Male Figure in Profile Facing Left

This drapery study for a standing male figure wearing a voluminous mantle was executed in a distinctive drawing technique-featuring soft, very granular black chalk with white chalk highlights-that is closely associated with Fra Bartolommeo and his workshop in Florence. The anatomical features of the figure are awkward in form, in contrast to the accomplished rendering of the draperies, but this is explained by the fact that the study, like a number of others by this artist, were in all probability drawn from a mannequin wearing cast draperies of real cloth (two wooden lay figures are mentioned in the inventory of Fra Bartolommeo's studio and possessions, drafted soon after his death in 1517). Here, the telltale clues of the mannequin are the curiously spherical head and pug-nose, along with the clumpy hands and large feet. The sheet was inscribed by an early collector at lower left del frate (by the friar), a typical reference to Fra Bartolommeo, who took vows in the Dominican order at the convent of San Marco, Florence.